Cyber Neighbors

I recently got a new cell phone number, and I've been getting lots of phone calls for the prior holder of this number. At first it was aggrevating, but in a way it's been kind of an interesting experience. She was apparently a very nice person and very connected (I think she's gotten more calls on this number than I have!) and I think she had been doing some charity work.  The people in her network are by-and-large quite nice: I almost look forward to chatting with her next caller!

Halloween!

Another Halloween come and gone. This year the kids were very excited about decorating the house, or rather the front yard --- probably because a house a couple doors down had done their place up in spades. So we added some more to our slowing growing stock of decorations (no pics, sorry!). Also, this year Son decided he would stay home and greet the trick-or-treaters instead of doing the rounds. I rather enjoyed this, sitting on the front porch with a warm drink and listening to the sounds of Halloween up and down the street.

The crowd pics are from the downtown merchants' Halloween event.

Weekend Getaway

We foisted the kids off on unsuspecting friends and relative (okay, they knew what they were signing up for) and headed for the hills - literally - for an anniversary get-away. We drove down to a place called Silver Falls State Park in the vicinity of Salem and did their "ten waterfall" hike. One hiking book described it as 1/2 mile, 5 hours: we think the park description of 7 miles is a bit closer, though I don't think it took us 5 hours. By my count we saw only 9 waterfalls, and one was just a trickle, but by any account it was beautiful! The pics don't do it justice.

Scene: An Office Cubical

[cell phone rings]

"Hello?"
"Hi Dad".
"How are you doing?"
"Just saying hi."
"That's a lovely thing to do."
"Um-hmm. 'Bye"

[cell phone disconnects]

Softball!

Daughter wanted to try out softball so she's doing the short fall season. Here are two pics from the diamond: the very first batter of the very first game, with Daughter ready on defense at third base. And the action shot shows Daughter's first base hit on her first at-bat. A lot of firsts there :-)

Welcome Our New Family Member

On Saturday, after months of concerted lobbying by Daughter, we found ourselves at the Portland Humane Society shelter signing the papers to take home this guy. He's 15 pounds of Poodle - Spaniel mix (probably), estimated at 5 years old. His shelter name was Reno (where I allegedly grew up) but Daughter has renamed him Rio. He's pretty mild-mannered so far, and getting settled into the family life well.

More Kauai: End with some miscellany

Well, it's been fun sharing our Kauai trip with you, but here's where we'll leave off.

Captions: She named this fish Buddy and made sure to feed it every day - finding a place to get a pastry is part of every trip now - yes, I was there! - roadside fruit stand because the Poipu farmer's market was described to us as being a bit fru-fru - the hula show at Coconut Marketplace is a benefit by a local hula school - the awesome playground at Lydgate Park (two pics) - and a family pic, make your own caption for those faces.

More Kauai: Beaches!

We didn't spend all our time at the resort: why do you go to Hawaii except for the beaches? Sometime we had to drag the kids along but once there they had a good time (it was the car rides that were difficult - we're losing our resistance to electronic games during car travel). Sorry for the small mountain of pictures, I couldn't help myself! These are from Lydgate beach, two different visits - Daughter was not happy about posing for a family picture!




A couple no-people picture just 'cause they're pretty



This next beach is right where the Wailua river comes out, it turned out to be a really nice spot: deserted, protected from the waves (though watch out for the current in the river), decent sand --- and shade! There was also, not pictured, a small tidal pond with tiny fish. Daughter spend a lot of time patiently trying to catch them, without success.



Later we found this beach, apparently only used by locals. It was actually quite decrepit, with run-down facilities and lots of trash, but it was such a beautiful spot we spent a long time there overlooking these issues. Another river came into the sea here, and we caught a lot of tadpoles - then released them and caught them all over again. And the shells here were top-notch. Oh, that reminds me, a local gave Terrie a couple very pretty shells, just because he noticed her collecting! And another guy, with his family enjoying the river front, noticed the kids trying to catch the tadpoles and loaned them small hand nets! What a friendly stop.

More Kauai: The Pool

The resort pool is a critical component of our vacations these days. This one had a nice shallow pool with a sandy "shore" (the pool bottom was concrete, not sand, they must have swept the sand out every night). Daughter found some kids to play with, who were around all week which is nice. When they weren't around she spent endless hours doing handstands and cartwheels in the water, and pestering us to play with her. Both kids had fun with the boogie board (rented for the week).

More Kauai: The Resort

Some views around the place where we stayed in Poipu:

Off to Hawaii!

Last week we were in Hawaii. I didn't even think about trying to post from Hawaii, though it would have been possible, so I'm going to tease you here by posting these "on our way" pictures. That luggage carousel is in Lihue on the island of Kauai, hooray! We'd planned to go carry-on the whole way but the first leg flight was delayed and by way of making it up to us they let us check bags for free. The late flight caused us to miss flight #2, but since it was the local inter-island hop, there was another one leaving just a few minutes after we got in. Hats off to the ground crew for getting all our bags to the finish line on time!

pirate sketch

Some of my very good friends have been doing some amazing artwork recently and I was feeling left out so I picked up my pen and drew this --- on my computer, which is almost a first for me. I do some paint work in my job, but nothing really meant to be noticed, if you know what I mean.  Thank you, DS and CC!

Colophon: Drawn in GIMP with a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.

More from Oaks Park

Some pictures that I overlooked in yesterday's post: Son's favorite "ride", the giant slide - he did it again and again. Not shown, Daughter favored the carousel, riding several times: I think we both enjoyed the fact that she enjoyed such a low-key ride when there were so many thrill rides nearby. Also, one of the few photographic proofs that I was there that day, riding the rails with Son. And an "artsy" photo of Son on the train - I don't remember taking the photo this way, though I've done similar shots in the past ....